Interview

Essay

Today, just a pointer & a “hell yes” to this Austin American Statesman article which gives props to Jimmy Fallon’s music booker Jonathan Cohen. A long time pal to The National in his tenure as a journalist for Billboard, Cohen has figured out a way to program musical guests for an age of YouTube & Hulu clips. His curatorial choices are intended as much for viewing online by office drones & bloggers the day after broadcast as they are for the wide-demographic audiences viewing Fallon’s show in real time.

Some passages from the article followed by a recent clip:

The music booker on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” is a 33-year old former Billboard reporter named Jonathan Cohen. Inside of a year, he has made that embattled late-night show broadcast TV’s most interesting venue for live music. Nothing else comes close.

“In my earliest discussions with Jimmy, the thing that was most important to him was variety, almost like someone’s iPod,” Cohen said Tuesday. “That’s the principle on which I’m booking.” To that end, Cohen occasionally books acts that have been out of the spotlight for a long period or legendary bands that have never played on TV before. Read more »